K1999: Pretender Profile
by Sonnevi
Summary: Theoretical description of a pretender: summary of a report to the Centre


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Date: 03 March 2002  
Disclaimers: All characters belong to their own... wait a minute, there are no real characters as such. Ok, the concept of Pretenders belongs to them as made them...   
  
Warnings: This has no story plot... I have only a vague idea that this is part of a report Sydney wrote in the early days of the Centre's involvement with Pretenders. You may wish to imagine your own plot to wrap this in... someone stealing some files, being interrupted, reading this text, and understanding at least the roots of the Pretender Project in the Centre. A report like this could make the time, effort, and money spent investing in raising their own pretender seem more than worth it. Personally, I imagine that Mr. Raines used this report, twisted it as the basis for his methods on Kyle...  
  
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01K1999: Pretender Profile  
by Sonnevi  
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Genius is only the simplest way to describe a Pretender. Their genius lies in a gestalt of many abilities, primarily of absorption, analysis, and imagination.   
  
They have the amazing capacity to absorb information of all kinds, remember and connect them in extraordinary ways and extraordinary degrees.   
  
This absorption is both abstract and sensory -- they can visualize, kinesthetically and spatially see and feel given information, and in fact project both logically and intuitively the outcome of a given scenario, based on previous knowledge.   
  
A medical textbook can make a doctor out of a Pretender, because the Pretender can take in the concepts related in the book and take the understanding even further, such that they know what each procedure is, and why it is done in such a way, why and how a procedure works on a body, how the body works with or against it, and so forth.   
  
Their imagination is so strong that this understanding, as I have mentioned, is enough to give kinesthetic competence -- i.e., a pretender can become an instant brain surgeon, and can even improve the procedures relating to brain surgery.   
  
They can take a part and extrapolate the whole, they can take a whole and see how each part relates to the other. Further than that, they can say what other applications the machine may have or what each part may do in some another (possibly as yet uninvented) apparatus entirely.   
  
This ability in even one field would grant anyone an accolade, would be enough to label one a genius in the field -- pretenders possess this talent in a multidimensionality -- they are geniuses in any and all fields.  
  
Their combined imagination and analytical ability might be likened to an extra sense, of a third dimension to an ordinary person's two-dimensionality, which allows them to even understand and extrapolate what is most elusive to even ourselves -- motives, emotions, thoughts and actions, which essentially allows them to become the person they pretend to be. Where one might not know one's actions until after the fact for a given scenario, a Pretender pretending to be you could probably know even before you did, or retroactively understand why another performed an apparently irrational act.  
  
Which is not to say, of course, that the Pretender is infallible. Quite the contrary. Naturally, the lack of information makes for a weaker Pretend. One cannot have the "instant brain surgeon" without having at least the textbook first. At least some prior knowledge is required: the more the better goes without saying. Secondly, there may be evidence that a Pretender's memory may be selectively compartmentalized. One cannot Pretend to be many persons at once, naturally (unless one would be so mad as to suggest having one Pretend to be a schizophrenic).   
  
Thirdly, the perception that this process is instantaneous is quite erroneous. I misspoke earlier when I said "instant brain surgeon." Let me clarify this -- one may have instant brain surgeon when you see that it only takes the Pretender hours to weeks compared to the years of study for a real, or shall we say, ordinary, brain surgeon. And it is known that even Mozart was made to practice often. Practice refines and improves a Pretend, as in any endeavor.   
  
There is a real danger that a Pretender will pretend so hard and so long that he essentially becomes the pretend. Again, let me clarify.   
  
Say our Pretender pretends to be a plumber. He pretends this for so long and so hard that he may no longer be anything but a plumber. He becomes, in essence, a plumber, and nothing more. He will be unable to break out of the pretend to be anything else, or at least anything else requiring something more complex than one would expect from a plumber. He may, however, be the best plumber in the world, unrivalled, due to the practice component. Our pretend brain surgeon, on the other hand, might still be able to do the tasks of a plumber, on the premise that it doesn't take a brain surgeon to change a pipe.   
  
I theorize that this is the fate of most Pretenders that have remained unidentified. Socialization has inculcated them into ordinary Joe Public with only, perhaps, a few flashes of insight or rare gift. They are stuck in one costume, as it were, instead of being able to change roles at will.  
  
We may be able to exploit this to our advantage. It is presumed that despite the deep chameleon ability of a pretender during a pretend, there is a core personality that remains intact, to shift the pretend, to extrapolate, to evaluate, to analyze -- our genius.   
  
Should we be able to raise our own pretender, we will be able to shape this core personality, to give it all the information we need without having to burden the pretend with most of society's norms and perceptions, which may actually stunt the analytical and absorptive part of our genius. (Society necessarily promotes certain behaviors and modes of thinking, including ignoring certain facts or methods.)   
  
If one pole says that the Pretender may become stuck in one pretend entirely, we might have the other pole, where our pretender take many pretends at will, with little core personality to bias them. Or, put another way, our genius will have a chameleon as an identity.   
  
With little socialization, with the values we give, our pretender will become a supreme Pretender, pretending almost full time. Presuming "practice makes perfect" holds true, we should have a pretender unparalleled from others before.  
  
--Fin--  
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Author's notes: My thanks to the person, Chan, who said they liked "TCP: Always Cool." This heartened me enough to post this, which was actually written about two to three years ago.   
  
Thanks to Shelly, who saw this when I first wrote it. I meant to polish it into a real story after that, truly, but nothing ever came. I'll finish the other stories someday, I hope. Thanks to TAE, for agreeing to beta, though I don't recall if I ever had the guts to send this.   
  
Those of you who want to see the kind of story I really, _really_ wish I could write, go over to the Perriverse to find the only Pretender fic I consider worth reading. (I find it hard to go through the slog of romance and, ahem, other stuff, that makes up most Pretender fic -- at least the last time I checked). It's called Long Way Home by Perri Smith. Characterization, plot, beautiful ending... I can only sigh in envy... 


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